Blood and Poetry
by Samara Tasarla
Summary: Taking place January 2004, in the aftermath of Chosen, Buffy is in Cleveland (home of yet another Hellmouth!) and suddenly facing literal and figurative demons who are way too familiar. Spike searches for her, a newly Shanshud soul, and finds a surprise.
1. Default Chapter

Disclaimer:

Joss created and owns these lovelies, damn his eyes, along with the other Buffy personalities, including Magic Jane Espenson; companies such as ME and Fox, et al. I just dirty his characters, disinfect them with a good spray of Lysol, and put 'em back in their boxes. This is partially therapy…the shock of Spike's immolation and various things SMG said about Buffy and Angel's probable reunition means I'll probably spend mucho time on my hopeful stories.

Also, I came up with parts of this story, mostly stuff in later chapters, with ninquan@aol.com (she has yet to get an account here). 

Enjoy!

Chapter One: Recollection

10:34 P.M.   

Cleveland, Ohio

"In other news, a teenage girl who was presumed missing has just been found dead. The apparent cause: neck rupture."

She clicks the television off with the remote. Two seconds of silence follow, and then the remote slams into the wall with preternaturally strong force.

"Must be Tuesday," Buffy mutters. It's late January in Cleveland. Giles told her that there was a Hellmouth here, but it had been dormant since the early 1800s, well before she, Faith, and Robin Wood arrived right before June.

"You breakin' the remote again? Cause you know I hate that," Faith shouts from the doorway of the bathroom. Steam drifts out and into the living room, making everything a degree warmer for a moment. Buffy's glad; she doesn't know how her new roomie can stand the cold weather, much less in her current clothing: a skimpy white cotton wifebeater and a pair of boxers with--are those rubber ducks?--some sort of print on them, presumably Robin's.

 The California girl was frozen in these Midwest mid-winters, even when the heat was on and she was dressed in thick dark clothes, like the black chenille turtleneck and tight, almost-navy jeans she is in now.

"Shut the hell up." A tear falls, with a soundless splash, out of Buffy's eye and onto the knee of her jeans.

"What? I must be a bad influence on you." The other woman, who is really only a few years older than Buffy, bounds onto the beat-up, broken-down couch with her usual show of energy, scooping up the wrecked remote on the way. Some strands of wet hair, falling in forming curls to Faith's shoulders, drip onto Buffy's shoulder and the couch.

"Leave me alone, okay?" Angry dignity forces her to attempt to conceal her outburst, or at least cover it with a cloak of anger.

"Hey, B," the Slayer began, her voice softened as much as it could; no such luck in covering it up, apparently; "What's this abut?" The accent remains. You can take the girl out of Boston...

"Neck rupture."

Faith blinks, then examines Buffy's neck for a few seconds before stopping short, then toppling off of the couch with a thud.

"I'm floored too," Buffy replies with a bitter laugh, extending a hand to help the fallen woman up. The phone starts an annoying whine, and Buffy automatically picks it up. 

"Yeah?" After a moment she hands it to Faith with a mock sigh. "It's Loverboy."

Faith sticks out her middle finger, accompanying it with a grin to show the joke. "Yo, Robin, hold up a sec?" Buffy is already almost in her room, but Faith takes the cordless phone with her and taps her on the shoulder.

"What?" Buffy shakes some blonde hair away from her face, with one hand on the doorknob to the room she occupied, which is next to Faith's. All she wants is to go inside, lie down, think...

"Should I tell him?" 

"About neck rupture? Why not?" She shrugs. "Maybe his amateur-guy-Slayer-ness could help."

"Gotcha." Faith runs into her room and slams the door. The remaining girl follows suit. Through the thin walls--too thin, Buffy thinks, especially when Robin happens to sleep over--she can hear the faint mutter of conversation.

She really can't complain about their living arrangements. She is extremely lucky, and she knows it, that Giles and Xander had money saved, and that Robin really helped support them. 

To be fair to herself, though, she does have a job, as a counselor at the school that Robin is the new vice-principal of--another stroke of luck--but it really only covers her expenses and half of the rent, which is pretty damn cheap for a two-bedroom. That is, a two-bedroom in a four-floor walkup and in a slummy part of the city, but still, very inhabitable. Faith has a job, a few actually, but all of them off-the-books. She's a jail renegade, for goodness' sake.

Buffy's bed--something Giles had put into storage, along with his books and a few other items, like their shabby couch--was her refuge for now. She left the lights out, but through the slits in the Venetian blinds the lights of cars lit the room every now and then.

Curling up with Mr. Gordo, the stuffed pig, she clears her mind and lets out a ragged breath, allowing all of the tears she had kept inside her for months to resurface. 

About her home. 

Everything that she could remember of importance that happened in Sunnydale happened in her home--well, aside from battles and the like. She had left it to go to LA after killing her demon lover--well, the first one, anyway. She found out Dawn's true origins there. Joyce died on the couch. Now it was gone.

About Dawn, who was now living with their dad. 

God, how she misses Dawn. The truth is, Dawn was the one who urged Buffy to go to Cleveland without her. At first Buffy was hurt, but one night Dawn told her that she knew Buffy needed to be alone, without the responsibility of her anymore. It didn't do much for Buffy's conviction, but she wasn't about to let Dawn know that. Buffy reasoned that she--Dawn--is a young woman with a mind and power of her own, and Buffy knows that her dad can give her the life she wouldn't have had with Buffy--one with college and boys that aren't vampires. Or hopefully not.

About Willow.

The all-powerful Wicca, her best friend for seven years, her almost-sister. Well, A.S. (After Sunnydale), Willow and her tongue-barbell honey moved to Manhattan, Willow enrolling in a community college right along with Kennedy, at least until she could get tenterhooks into a better school. Buffy still blames Kennedy for the fight that Willow started--that's how she always thinks of it--about Buffy centering everything on herself. Buffy couldn't do her "I'm so special" bit, not after Slayerness was no longer such an exclusive club. What was Willow's role anymore, anyway? What about Kennedy? Buffy shot back with how Kennedy never had a huge role in her life, and Willow went on the defensive and said something about how Buffy never did seem to be very comfy with her lovers--at least not the ones after Oz, anyway. So she and Kennedy left. Another burned bridge, Buffy thought.

About her friends who died.

Anya. Xander misses her too; he mourns her visibly. Black clothes, a sad smile. A small bunny that he keeps on his keys. The few SITs who died--the many who died--who knows? And others. Sophie from Doublemeat. High school friends, the few that she had. 

About Spike.

What if she hadn't given him the amulet? Well, she knew that she wouldn't be thinking this now--she'd be dead.

But: what if she hadn't listened to him? What if she stayed with him? She didn't know.

What happened to him? Where was he? What was he doing now? Was he smoking, being sarcastic...was he thinking of her?

She still had something of his, something Giles had saved for her: his duster. The leather jacket he'd taken from Nikki, Robin's mother, after he snapped her neck. But that was before the soul. That was before he fell in love with her. That was before she loved him.

These thoughts accompany her into sleep.

Sometime in the midnight hours

Sunnydale, California

"Will you hold me?" Spike looked at her adoringly, and she wanted more than she wanted to save the world to just kiss him. But she didn't, and he held her. For hours, she was held by strong arms that were warm from borrowed blood, and she was safe. She was loved. He whispered to her throughout the night, things that she barely heard, but she didn't care what he was saying.

They both fell asleep soon enough.

In her dreams she was dead. A crumpled pile on the ground in front of Glory's tower, among debris and blood. She saw the others around her, though. Dawn with a ripped shirt for bandages, one hand on her wounds and becoming blood-streaked, the other on her mouth and becoming tear-streaked. Giles, kneeling down next to her on a few bricks, glasses broken, eyes watering. Xander carrying Anya in his arms, and they both looked at Buffy as Xander started to weep silently. Spike kneeling prostrate in front of her and sobbing like a man whose hope just evaporated before his eyes.

Then she woke up, pushed the real Spike--asleep, peaceful, and clean--away from her gently, and faced what she knew might very well be her last day on Earth.

Again.

3:23 A.M.

Cleveland, Ohio__

_Slayer._

The word means nothing to her now. Not after the battle, her last as the one and only--or, rather, as the one of the only two. As the Slayer. Because every girl that would be a Slayer, is a Slayer.

_Slayer_.

When uttered by a dead man, a dead man with peroxide hair, high cheekbones, cold hands and a British lilt, the word takes on meaning and weight. 

Covered in a cold sweat, Buffy nearly falls out of her bed and onto the freezing floor. Her boots are still on, though she took off the sweater sometime that she remembers only in a shadowy way, so she's left in a sports bra and her jeans.

"Damn you," she whispers through her hands, where she's buried her face. She glances at the cheap digital clock with its red letters and curses at the time it reads. Maybe Faith was right earlier; maybe she IS a bad influence. 

In the twilight, since the sky is already taking on a blue cast, she makes a decision that she doesn't know she makes: she goes to her chest, the one Xander made for her weapons--most of them are gone, lost in the fray--and opens it, taking out the one thing she has stored in it: her piece of Spike. His duster.

The black leather is supple and strong, and still kinda smelly. She holds it for a second and finally brings it to her bed. On the way, a silver flask falls out of the pocket. While she has little interest in whatever is inside it, she picks it up and stuffs it into the pocket again. Slipping her fingers around the collar, she finds something wet there. Another teardrop. She doesn't want to cry about him, she doesn't want to talk about him. She doesn't know what she wants.

Throwing the jacket into the chest again, she draws in a breath and goes out to the kitchen quietly, trying not to wake Faith up. 

On the fridge, though, there is a note:

B-

I'm out. Seeya in the morning. Or not.

-Faith

"Loverboy," Buffy murmurs to herself. It's got to be Robin--if it wasn't, Faith would have woken her up. Probably. Hopefully...

Of course, per usual, there's little in the fridge. Some bread that's already a penicillin candidate, a mostly-empty can of whipped cream, an orange. She seizes the orange and peels it in one long strip, then proceeds to eat it in, oh, about thirty seconds.

The phone jolts her again, and she grabs it deftly.

"When are you telemarketers gonna learn! It's four in the fu--"

"Buffy?" The refined man on the other end is no telemarketer. Buffy wasn't sure if he was even altogether happy about the newfangled invention of this telephone thing. Embarrassment and annoyance creep in, but relief at hearing him is there too. He's in England, trying to round up the few Watcher friends he had left, after the eradication of the Council, or at least that's the last she heard of him in November.

"Giles! Um, it sorta IS four in the morning here. PLEASE don't tell me that you're in desperate need of a heart to heart right now."

"No, no, far from it actually." She could tell that Giles knew something of the majorly bad variety.

"Well...what is it? And don't mince words."

"Something else happened in Sunnydale, Buffy. Besides its demise, besides the spell. I found it in my research, and it's really quite urgent--"

"Yeah, well, it's really quite LATE for me. The Hellmouth here is starting to act up--I heard something about 'neck rupture' on the news--" At this Giles chuckled, but tried to cover it with a cough "--and you were all 'pooh pooh, dormant for centuries, pooh pooh!' "

"I'm terribly sorry, but--"

"No buts. I'm not your only girl anymore, remember? There has to be thousands of Slayers." Her voice was growing edgier by the second. She's tired, hungry, upset...thank God tomorrow's Saturday, she thinks

'I need to talk to you about this. You're the only one who knows what I need to know--"

"Then tomorrow. Or just in a few hours, okay? You have no clue about my life. As usual."

There was silence on the other end.

"Look, I'm just really beat. This has nothing to do with you." She pauses, not knowing what to say, as is too often the case. "I'll be bright eyed, bushy tailed, all that in a few hours and some sleep, I promise."

"Well...I guess it can wait a few hours. But you must promise me then--"  
"Yes, I promise, goodBYE." She barely gives him a moment longer before stuffing the phone back into its cradle.

Ah, sleep, bed sweet bed--but now there's a problem: she's buzzed. Slayer-buzzed. For the first time in months--she can't even remember the last real hunt she had, not before the be-all end-all finale--she feels what it is to be Slayer. Not a Slayer, not even the Slayer, just Slayer.

In two minutes flat she has her sweater and her long baby-blue coat--the one she'd worn in the snow so many years ago (let's forget the fact that they were, oh, just about four...)--on and she's slamming the door behind her and walking onto slush-covered ground.  

Turning the corner of the slums.

The cramps are starting, the vampire-variety. There's one near.

Grabbing the stake she still has in the pocket, half for comfort, a quarter out of habit, and a quarter in preparation.

And...now!

Suddenly, at the sight of the contorted face, the yellow eyes, the hideous fangs, Buffy does something she hasn't done in what seems like years: she screams.

Long and loud and wailing.

The vampire laughs, and they both lunge forward.

To an invisible outsider, this seems choreographed and beautiful.

To the vampire, this seems like another pretty girl with a graceful neck, but mostly, this seems like dinner.

To Buffy, this seems like life. Hard and bright. Soft and dark...and suddenly she sees stars. She hears the stake clatter to the pavement. She smells decay from the dead thing on her. She feels it clamped onto her neck. She tastes blood in her mouth, on her own lips.

The monster got the blonde girl in the alley.

Oh, no.

The monster now IS the blonde girl in the alley.

And she feels pretty.

...to be continued...


	2. Resurrection

Disclaimer: Joss owns every character in here (well…with the exception of a few…), as well as does ME, Fox, etc. I use them, abuse them, sane them up (or not…), and then leave them as I found them. In this chapter, the part about the pile of shoes was a co-concept with ninquan@aol.com

Chapter Two: Resurrection

11:30 A.M.

New York City, New York

"God-DAMN!" The burly moving-guy stares at the spectacle before him. A truck that was supposed to unload neat, orderly boxes has just unloaded, right on 33rd street in the middle of a Manhattan morning, a pile of...shoes.

Shoes of all shapes and sizes, colors and styles. Silver platforms. Nike tennies in Knicks colors, blue and orange. Flip-flops from the 99-cent store across the street in an awful gaudy pink floral print. Strappy black stilettos. Bunny slippers. Orthopedic boots that are some sort of cross between Doc Martens and Dr. Scholl's. Snowshoes from the Modell's on the next corner. Swimshoes in blue and green.

Just about every kind of footwear under the sun. Or in darkness.

And emerging from this is some moving thing.

A man.

A man with unnaturally blonde hair--must be a haircolor freak from St. Mark's Place, the guy automatonically assumes--and pale pale skin--he must really be taking the underground thing seriously is the guy's next assumption--and a black tee-shirt. Ironically, once he tumbles out of the side of the eighteen-foot high pile and onto well-trodden black asphalt, his own shoes are long gone, leaving him in black socks that come up and under his slim black jeans and are filled with holes.

"I'm drowning in footwear."

The voice that says this is scratched and lilting with a British tint; it's cockney and upper crust at once. It belongs to a man who's been dead for 120-odd years.

Today, however, the man is alive. Blood courses through his veins. His heart beats. He breathes. The smell of blood from his hand catches his attention, and a part of him wonders why he didn't automatically notice it--and why it hasn't healed. Shrugging, he brings the wound on his fingers to lips that are starting to regain color and suckles it out of habit--and he finds himself repulsed by the taste, metallic and dangerous.

"Where the bloody fuckin' hell have I been?" Each word is punctuated by him stomping as hard as he can on the pavement. It hurts--could be that his boots aren't on. He's about to say more when he realizes that the strange warmth on his face is from the sun. He's done for. And yet, instead of cooking and being able to fit neatly into an ashtray, he is merely warm. In the sun.

Pretty damn cool for a dead guy.

"Yo, buddy," the mover calls to him, "do you know what you just did?"

"No, mate, I don't. But it was pretty tuff, I s'pose?" He laughs for a second, his back to the guy and to the abomination that is the pile of shoes outside of the Manhattan Mall.

"D'you even know your name?"

Does he ever know his name! It's the one thing he CAN remember.

Turning towards the muscle that stands where the man is, he grins dramatically, always one to chew the scenery.

"Spike."

While the mover stands slack-jawed, Spike retrieves the only pair of shoes that are connected--what were his boots--and steps into them, more happily than he'd like to.

He tries to decide where to go--the city's gone and changed on him since 1977--and finally starts uptown, to a friend's house. A nice little blood cousin, he knows instinctively. He takes a few tentative steps, no confident swagger left in his body.

"Hey, uh, Spike buddy, I think you dropped somethin'." 

He turns around and takes what the guy offers. It's a little silver disc with jewels on it and a broken cord, and it is his. It's his amulet. And with the amulet his memories return.

Sometime in the afternoon

Sunnydale, California.

"I love you," she said to him, before the end of the world.

"I know you don't mean it," he'd replied. "But thanks."

It was all sort of blurry after that. His soul was...transcending him. Glowing. Not making him worry and lament, but helping him do something that would make up for all the evil he'd ever done. He'd get to save the world.

Buffy held his hand. It gave him the strength he needed to see it through to the desperate end. 

When he knew that the last girl had left the building alive, he ordered his soul--his power--his self to finish the job and destroy the ubervamps, destroy the Hellmouth, destroy Sunnydale--destroy him.

Then bliss. Pure ethereal bliss. He was light. He was warmth. He was ether.

He didn't know how long this had lasted, this state, but he knew that it ended too soon when he landed in a giant shoe-mound next to the mall, as a human to boot.

11:48 A.M.

New York City, New York

At this very moment, however, all he can think about is her. Buffy. The way she would put her hair into an absentminded ponytail. God, he always loved that hair. Or the way she looked at him when they were making love in his crypt. Powerful and helpless at once. Or the way she asked him to hold her, that last night before the showdown. The feel of her body against his that night alone makes him want to cry.

A shudder runs through him and he nearly drops the amulet once more. He stuffs it in his pocket and continues his baby steps, until a looming and familiar figure accosts him.

"Well, well, what d'you know. I got a poofter with hair that grows straight-up coming to watch the shoes." He grins lopsidedly--he and his grandsire never got along so great anymore. He wondered if it was about Dru, about Buffy, or about the fact that Angel's bloody stupid. He preferred the last one. 

"I don't need to take this bull from you now. I just needed to see if it came true." He crosses his arms defensively and stays in the shadows. 

"What came true, Angel-boy?"

"The Shanshu prophecy. You know that as well as Buffy does. Or is this a true-love only thing, hmm?"

"Oh, you think just cause I'm the champ I'm gonna be a savior to your psyche? I'm still the same old chap, in case you didn't notice." He takes out a cig from his back pocket and flicks his lighter open.

"You're the same old chap, but you're a human, and those things really WILL kill ya now," Angel snaps from his shadows. Spike raises his mangled right eyebrow, but he stamps out the cigarette. "Look, I really can't stay--" he motions around him, at the receding shadows "--but there's a branch of Wolfram and Hart here, and I think they can help you out." Angel hands a card to Spike, who takes it with a snatch that makes Angel's hand start smoking in the sun.

"Uh, sorry there," he offers.

"Look, I'd better get underground for a few hours, sun and all..."

"Yeah. Well, you go do that, I'll go to the evil lawyers."

"Fair enough. Say, aren't you a little...cold?" Angel tilts his head slightly, and Spike realizes that he is actually pretty cold, and not in the much more pleasant vampiricly cold way.

"I s'pose." However cold he is, though, he won't let Angel think that, just cause he can be killed in many more ways now, that he too is now a nancy-boy.

"The 'evil lawyers' can get you somethin'." He nods a little, still barely showing an emotion. 

"G'day then," Spike mutters, already on his way to the address on the card.

"You know, Spike, I think she really does love you," he shouts.

It seems like everyone's telling him that these days. He ignores it and keeps on walking. He needs to get to this place, and he needs to get to Buffy. Whether she loves him or not is, at this point, unimportant.

12:27 P.M.

New York City, New York.

Spike barely pays any attention to the snobs at Wolfram and Hart's Manhattan branch. All he does listen to is the information they have on Buffy's whereabouts. Since Angel gave them direct orders, they open up a filing cabinet just for him--one filled with files of names he knows all too well.

Emerson, Anya.

Giles, Rupert

Harris, Alexander.

Rosenberg, Willow

Summers, Dawn.

Summers, Buffy.

The last one is the only one he cares about. Well, maybe Dawn's. The others can go to hell for all he cares.

"The Hellmouth in Cleveland has returned from a period of dormancy," the stiff-upper-lip Briton in pinstripes sitting across from him says in a very fruity tone.

"So, you're tellin' me that the other Boca del Infierno that I risked life and limb--well, limb anyway--eradicating WASN'T the last one?"

"Well...yes."

"Gotta hand it to the girl. She's got a bleedin' amazing sense of where to settle down. What about the little bit?"

"Little bit?" The Brit shifts uncomfortably in his chair, despite the fact that it's the closest thing to an armchair that the office has.

"Dawn, you fruitcake."

"Oh, yes. She's living with her father now--"

"And Buffy allowed that?" Concern for the girl surprises him. He remembers distinctly how Buffy fought to keep her under her own care, and now it seems she gave up the fight.

"Apparently so." The sunlight catches the agent's grey hair and Spike notices with--is this a ripple of pleasure even? --some emotion that it falls on his own hand, and his hand absorbs it gladly. "Can hands be glad?" He mutters idiotically to himself.

"Sorry?"

"Uh, forget that. The Slayer's in Cleveland, that's all I needed to know." He gets up from his incredibly uncomfortable chair and stretches his legs.

"Her being a Slayer is inconsequential now."

"No kidding." Buffy is the Slayer, whether there are two or a billion of them. Like everyone around him, he knows that Slayerness is a part of Buffy, and it's still important to him. Anger starts to bubble up, but he keeps it down below his surface. No need to make an enemy out of this one.

"We can get you transportation there. Fast, secret. Free." At the last word, Spike realizes that he has no money. "Monetary assistance is also available for you, sir," he adds, as if he read his mind--not an impossible thing at this law firm. This is no Binder & Binder, here.

"How soon then? I don't fancy being stuck in an unfamiliar place for however long it takes you nancy-boys to do your processes and paperwork." Folding his arms against his chest, his moving, breathing chest—the whole humanity thing has yet to sink in—he tilts his head at the lawyer.

"Whenever you want, Willia—" 

"It's Spike, or sir, or whatever you want, just for God's sake not William." He chokes on the name, having far too many bad associations with it, and sputters for a moment before turning a glare onto the lawyer.

"As I was saying, you can leave as soon as you wish. You might want a change of clothes, but that's your prerogative." The man's eyes shifted skeptically up Spike's frame. The used-to-be-vampire had to agree. The shirt, the jeans, all of it was dusty and in need of mending. "Sir?"

"Yeah?"

"Angel has instructed me to give you a note for Ms. Summers, if that's where you're going." His 'if' sounded more like 'because,' since Spike, usually so crafty and stealthy, is becoming obvious. Maybe a side effect of humanity. And he dislikes it.

"Is this the whole seal of wax, official deal, or is it more of a cheap cologne-scented business?" Spike wants to hit something. Hard. Feel shards of something. If he was still a vampire, the bumpies would be popping up right about now. He's a human, he's weak, and he's beginning to remember why he loved vampiness so much.

"Neither. Just an envelope, that is to be given to her unopened. If it is opened—" If Spike opens it, he's too polite to say "—it's probably not extremely important."

Spike shrugged.

"Whatever you say, mate. Now, about this clothing thing…"

6:17 PM. 

Cleveland, Ohio.

Rather crumbly, this brownstone. _Dilapidation city_, he thinks. _I'll get her the hell out of here, into a nice little flat. Her and the little bit._ Strangely enough, he doesn't want a cigarette. He's cold, even in the new leather duster given to him by the people at Wolfram and Hart. He would've picked the locks, but he has keys, also provided by the lawyers. _Some lawyers. Probably most of them are witches and demons in disguise._

His breath clouds in front of him, sending a thrill through his soul. _My soul._ When he gets to the apartment door, he turns the key and finds a pair of bodies moving together, smashed up against the doorframe for the kitchen. At the door's being slammed shut, the people unlock, and Spike gives each the once over, one with wide eyes, the other narrowed. Faith, the other Slayer. She gets a smile; she was friendly, kind even. And he is damned—again—if she isn't sexy as hell. Then Robin Wood. Son of Nikki. Attempted Spike-murderer. He's the one who gets a slight snarl.

"You're alive?" Faith squeaks, unlike her usual tone. "I mean, yo, you're not dead. That's cool."

"It's a long story. I'll tell you, if you're a good girl." He chuckles, throaty and short, before looking to Robin. "'Ello."

"You're human." Disbelief singes his voice.

"Damn right I am. I'm not here to make the small talk though." Glance to Faith, who's comfortably leaning against the doorframe as if she had been there for hours. "Where's Buffy?"

"That's what we'd like to know. She's been gone since last night." Faith shuffles her weight.

Impossible.

She's gone? Missing?

He's searched for her. He came back for her, he thinks in his soul of souls. 

And she's not here.

He decides to blame the door.

Then he leaves, a half-gone door, a stunned Slayer, and a confused boy in his wake.


End file.
